Birmingham in context: Street-network sprawl trends
Birmingham in context
The chart above shows SNDi trends for new street additions (left panel) and the entire network (right panel), with Birmingham plotted against England and United Kingdom. All three follow the same trend in new construction, suggesting a shared regional pattern of development. Most recently, Birmingham's incremental SNDi fell from 4.35 to 3.8 between 1991-2005 and 2006-2020. In terms of the aggregate network, Birmingham ranked 45th out of 124 cities in England and 52nd out of 143 in United Kingdom as of 2020.
New Street Additions (2006–2020)
- SNDi value
- 3.8
- Rank in United Kingdom
- 55th of 143
- Rank in England
- 49th of 124
Entire Network (Aggregate)
- SNDi value
- 3.42
- Rank in United Kingdom
- 52nd of 143
- Rank in England
- 45th of 124
Rankings go from most connected to most disconnected — rank 1 is the most connected.
What about similarly populated cities?
- Cali, Colombia
- Curitiba, Brazil
- Maharajganj, India
- Tasikmalaya, Indonesia
- Daegu, South Korea
- Lanzhou, China
In new street additions, Birmingham built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1991-2005, then improved, while Cali fluctuated in its street-construction patterns and Tasikmalaya built increasingly disconnected streets from 1975 through 1976-1990, then improved. For the full street network, though, all three cities follow the same trend. Birmingham and Cali have been converging in their street-network character since 1975.